Local police to continue working the case

Jeremy Margolis, former assit. US attorney with a drawing made by James Lewis, the same man Margolis helped send to jail for extortion in the Tylenol murder case. (ABEL URIBE )

The FBI has bowed out as head of a task force investigating the long-unsolved Tylenol killings, transferring responsibility to local agencies that would be responsible for any prosecutions, authorities said Friday.

The FBI had headed the task force since it was formed in 2007 after the investigation had gone dormant for years.

The announcement came days before the 31st anniversary of the deaths of seven Chicago-area residents after they ingested cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules over a few days in fall 1982, spreading fear across the country and leading to wholesale changes in the packaging of over-the-counter medications.

The Arlington Heights Police Department is now coordinating the investigation, said Cmdr. Mike Hernandez. The FBI will continue to play a "supporting role," he said.

"We're still working the case," Hernandez said.

Frank Bochte, a spokesman for the FBI in Chicago, said the FBI has been involved in the investigation since the beginning and would "be available to assist if any other information comes in." He said if any charges were filed they would likely be state murder charges and not under federal jurisdiction.

In addition to Arlington Heights police, the task force has investigators from the Illinois State Police and the Elk Grove Village, Lombard, Schaumburg, Winfield and Chicago police departments.

Over the years, investigators have focused attention on James Lewis, who was convicted in 1984 of extortion for demanding $1 million to "stop the killing" in a letter to Tylenol's manufacturer. He has long denied involvement in the killings.

Authorities searched Lewis' suburban Boston home in 2009 and collected DNA from him in 2010, but he has never been charged in the deaths.

Two years ago, the FBI announced it was seeking DNA from Theodore Kaczynski, the convicted Unabomber who was a native of south suburban Evergreen Park, to determine if he was responsible for the Tylenol murders. Kaczynski was arrested in 1996 in a ramshackle cabin in Montana for the mail-bomb spree that left three dead and 29 injured and is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Colorado.